Matchmaker Cat (A Romantic Comedy Short Story) by Elizabeth Kyne Page A

a young kid at his first
job interview. He kept fiddling with it and running his finger
between his neck and collar like it was strangling him. I’ve never
seen a man fidget so much.’ I ripped open the pouch and got a whiff
of catty gravy. ‘I know he was nervous, and you can’t blame the
man, but the only things he seemed to want to talk about were the
weather and house prices. I nearly fell asleep in my soup.
    ‘The thing that
finally did it was he picked his nose - honestly, Chester, even you
would have been disgusted. He thought he’d done it behind his
napkin, but I saw what he was up to. Then he used the same hand to
eat his bread roll.’ The memory of it turned my stomach. ‘And that
was the end of another pathetic attempt at me having a
relationship.’
    I bent down and
squeezed rabbity gloop from the pouch into Chester’s bowl. He stood
beside it, leaning forward like an athlete on the starting line.
When I stood up, I half expected him to pounce on his dinner like a
lion upon a gazelle. But Chester isn’t one to do what people
expect. Instead, he looked at the pile of easy-to-chew rabbit and
nudged his nose forward to give it a gentle sniff. He paused, as if
considering. Then he turned away from the bowl and walked out of
the kitchen with a superior air, leaving me standing with a half
empty pouch in my hand.
    ‘Chester!’ I
called after him. But he was gone.
    As I put the
kettle on, I wondered which beast was the more unfathomable - men
or cats.
    I made myself a
mug of tea and took it into the lounge.
    I stopped at
the doorway because the soft glow from my computer screen
illuminated the room. Not unusual in itself, but I could swear I
hadn’t turned it on that morning. Even if I had, after half an hour
of being left idle it’s programmed to go into sleep mode.
    I flicked the
lightswitch and the one weak energy-saving lightbulb at the centre
of my ceiling struggled to cast an orange-tinged light across the
lounge. Chester let out a startled meow and leapt from the computer
table onto the floor.
    ‘Chester!’
    There was my
answer to how the computer happened to be on: Chester had somehow
woken it up.
    My cat tried to
pretend he hadn’t been lurking anywhere he shouldn’t and wandered
over to the coffee table where he rubbed his side against one of
the legs. It was this sort of behaviour that had left a thin film
of cat hair on my carpet and upholstery. The place was overdue a
hoover. It was overdue a tidy and a dust as well, but with so many
bookshelves over-filled with dust-attracting volumes and a saggy
past-its-use-by-date, faded red sofa taking up most of the space,
there was little incentive to make the effort.
    I took my tea
over to the computer table and put it on top of the pile of credit
card and utility bills I’d left to deal with later. My first
thought was to turn the machine off, but then I figured I might as
well check my email.
    The web-browser
was running. It was open at a page with a large photo of a smiling
man in his forties and, alongside, a bunch of paragraphs about
him.
    I turned to my
cat. ‘Have you been playing with the mouse again?’ He stopped
abusing the leg of the coffee table and looked back at me like he
didn’t understand my human words.
    I decided to
ignore the stupid cat and turned back to the monitor. I was about
to close down the website and open up my email account, when the
first paragraph caught my eye.
    ‘ Looking to
meet a woman in her late thirties / early forties for walks in the
woods, trips to the cinema and romantic evenings at home with a
bottle of wine.’
    As I read, the
man seemed to be smiling at me from the screen. His eyes drew me
in, as if he were speaking the words directly to me. I read
further.
    ‘ I never
thought I’d turn to a dating website, but after years of living
alone, I think this could be a great way to meet people.’
    I’d never turn
to a dating website either - I was desperate, but not that
desperate - which made me